Skis on Ice

Abraham Leib Berenstein was living a glamorous life, jetting around the world as a ski instructor and movie stuntman, until discovering the thrill of Torah

Wednesday, September 14, 2016

DOWNHILL RIDE “Maybe today I wouldn’t be married, or I’d be divorced, or married to a non-Jew. Or I’d have killed myself in a ski or motorcycle accident. Today I have five children, I’m learning and teaching and writing” (Photos: Lior Mizrachi, Family Archives)

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privileged young man in Argentina, Leonardo Berenstein led a charmed life: sports, horses, skiing. He left university to follow his passion for skiing, traveling all over Europe in the winters and returning to Argentinain the summer months (the Argentinian winter) to ski at home. He opened a business in Miamiand did stints as an extra in movies.

He was having the time of his life. But once he tasted Torah, his soul began to realize what it had been lacking, and he began a slow but steady path to teshuvah. Today, the father of five and an avreich in Bnei Brak, he has published a book of divrei Torah, another book about different people’s teshuvah tales, and yet another comprised of stories of Hashgachah pratis. He publishes a weekly devar Torah and is a kiruv activist in the Spanish- and Hebrew-speaking communities.

“Many people assume that baalei teshuvah find religion because they’ve had a hard time in life, that they turn to religion for a solution,” he says. “I was very happy with my life. The teshuvah stories I collected are also stories of people who were happy and successful before they found Torah. They had everything. But spiritually, they had nothing. I want people to see that you can choose Torah for positive reasons.”

Downhill Racer

180 Degrees, his book of teshuvah stories, became a bestseller in Spanish and Hebrew. It’s now in the process of being translated into English and Portuguese. Chapter Four is actually his own story: “The International Ski Instructor.”

Born in 1969, Berenstein relates his childhood in Buenos Aires, the son of a prosperous businessman and grandson of European immigrants who’d managed to leave Romania just before the war. Although his grandmother told him her hometown of Khotin was home to 10,000 religious Jews before the war, all that Judaism was dissipated by emigration, and later, genocide by the Nazis.

InArgentina, their Judaism consisted of abridged Sedorim for Pesach, a Yamim Noraim trip to shul to hear the shofar, and sending Leonardo and his two sisters to a nonreligious Jewish elementary school. “My bar mitzvah was Reform,” he remembers. “It was held in a kosher hall, but only because the hall my parents chose served only kosher food.”

While spiritually underprivileged, the family was materially flush. “We never lacked anything,” he relates in his book. “We always had the best toys and games. We also owned a huge ranch outside the city, with a seven-bedroom house, a twenty-meter-long swimming pool, a stable, dogs, and huge play areas. We often traveled to theUnited States— to Orlando andMiami— as well as to Europe andIsrael. Over the years, my father’s financial situation grew stronger and stronger, and from the 1980s and on, we would fly first class and stay in five-star hotels at a time when many people couldn’t afford to fly abroad at all.”

While he’s no longer a skiing celebrity, Avraham Berenstein still hits the slopes when he can. “It’s just not the main focus of my life anymore. Today I stay healthy to serve Hashem better”

He did have some brushes with anti-Semitic classmates while attending a German high school, where he was one of only three Jewish students. It simultaneously led him to be closer to the other Jews and reluctant to advertise his Jewishness. “I always felt I was different,” he says. “But I had no strong spiritual connection. I’d never met a religious person. InArgentina, the Ashkenazim are at either of two extremes: either very religious or observing practically nothing at all.”